


In Tandem

by biggestbaddestwolf



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-09-18 08:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9375830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggestbaddestwolf/pseuds/biggestbaddestwolf
Summary: In an alternate world, when the Watchtower fell, Gabriel Reyes called it quits. Working as a mercenary out of Los Angeles, he's lost everything- including the man that he loved. When Ana Amari shows up, newly reunited Overwatch in tow, Gabe dismisses them, and their claims to have seen Jack Morrison again- until one night changes everything. Now Gabriel finds himself tracking the love of his life, racing to stop the Doomfist gauntlet from falling into the wrong hands, and facing strange truths from his younger years.What will happen when he discovers not just the origins of Overwatch, but what he and Jack have truly become?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a severely altered Overwatch universe, one in which Gabe never goes to Talon, and OW's corruption goes far deeper than anyone realizes.

**UNITED STATES MILITARY BASE: LOCATION [REDACTED]**

  
  


Klaxons went off, jolting Jack Morrison awake. There was no gun in his room, although he reached out for one. In between the clanging sirens, a voice attempted to be heard over the intercom. The electronic voice was spitting out directions- majority needed to prep for evacuation, those assigned to this squad had to guard this door, those assigned to this level of security needed to be here.

He heard the click and slam of some of the rooms around him being locked down. He heard slamming- people punching at the doors that had just been closed in their faces. Even has he shoved his boots on, he listened carefully for the room across from him. When he stepped into the hallway, he confirmed what he suspected- what he feared: there was no one in Room 6, and the room had not been locked down.

Gabriel Reyes wasn’t in his room, and the announcements were telling a trained squad to make its way towards medical.

Jack didn’t realize he was running until he came to a halt.

The main medical bay was set up with a center, transparent cell/medical room. There was enough room for multiple scientists to poke and prod at you, and if more needed to observe, they could stand around the cell and take notes without being in the way. There were always enough scientists crowding for the entire circumference to be filled. For the moment, there was a gap where those crowding scientists should be, and a ring of armed soldiers, rifles up, approaching the glass.

Jack could see everything happening on a closed circuit monitor at the edge of the hall.

Inside the cell, a doctor- Dr. Franz, identifiable by the mass of tightly coiled brown curls spread like a pool- was slumped over the examination table, face down. Jack had seen enough of the dead to understand what was happening, but there was no blood, no real signs of a struggle- nothing was mangled or broken, except for the stand which held the IV bags.

Gabe had just finished ripping the needles out of his arm. There was no blood there either, although he did wince. What there was didn’t make sense.

“Smoke…?” Jack muttered under his breath, turning away from the monitor in order to see if there was a way around the squad. He knew that there wasn’t- he’d been trained alongside them- trained some of them, honestly. If he did his job, they wouldn’t budge- but there had to be something…

The fire alarm clashed painful with the emergency sirens. Jack winced, resisting the urge to cover his ears.

There was no fire. But whatever was happening caused the soldiers to open fire. Every single one of them. Jack heard himself scream in spite of the firefight, he heard himself scream Gabe’s name-  _ Gabe!  _ Maybe  _ Reyes! _ Maybe even  _ Gabriel! _ \- and he flung himself forward, doing everything he was trained not to do.

He managed to take one other soldier down before screeching to a halt. He wasn’t sure what caused him to freeze- the professional soldier in him wanted to say that it was the fact that there were too many ‘friendly’ guns aimed at him, but another part of him knew it was because too many of the squad had stopped firing. They were out of ammo.

The silence was just as deadly as the bullets. There was a terrible pulsing pain burning in Jack’s arm, and he didn’t dare think about that right now. Instead, he turned slowly towards the cell as he felt one of the soldiers he- and Gabe- had trained restraining him. Jack allowed it.

He was too busy staring at the cell to care. Now that he got a good look at it, there was no smoke either. There was something, something that Jack at first confused with smoke, dark and purple and thick, curling out and filling the cell.

There was blood of course- Dr. Franz’s body had been hit too many times to count. But there was no second  _ body _ . Just thick smoke that leaked through cracks in the cell that shouldn’t have even existed, smoke that moved like it had a purpose beyond expansion and--

The grip on Jack vanished. It didn’t relent, it didn’t ease, or even really let go. It was just gone. Jack had better reflexes than the soldiers he had trained; he was able to turn and see the soldier that he’d trained suddenly hoisted up by a familiar arm, thrown aside as his whole body slumped.

The best description that Jack had was that when Gabriel Reyes’ hand grabbed the soldier, it looked as if the man had simply fled his body. Given up completely, become a husk rather than deal with Gabe.

Gabe, who was reforming from the smoke that had fled the cell. Who had looked on the edge of death only a day ago but whose face looked less starved, whose dark skin had more color and vibrancy to it than it had in a week. Gabe, who was fucking  _ laughing _ , that laugh that he got mid-field work when he stopped slinking in the shadows and pulled out his gun.

It was Gabe, but that didn’t make any sense. That was all that Jack could process. It was worse when the mist- was that what it was?- separated again and Gabe was gone. When the mist curled up as one, slithering through the soldiers and aiming straight for Jack.

Suddenly, Jack’s back was at the cell, and Gabe’s hand was around his neck. Something in Jack’s chest screamed in agony worse than his arm, but he stared at his friend nonetheless.

“Call them off, Morrison.” Gabe’s voice, reforming as his body did, echoed and came from a place deeper than it had in the past. “I told them-”

“Told them what, Reyes?” Jack gasped.   
“I was  _ hungry _ .”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ana and Gabe meet again. Gabe's current job goes south...technically.

**Years Later- Gabriel Reyes’ Apartment, Los Angeles**

  
  


Nowadays, Gabe hated two things. He hated dreams- he didn’t tend to have imaginative ones, just memories on replay, the kind of dreams that left him caught up in his feelings from decades ago. He didn’t have time to wake up with memories of his own men training their guns on him. He didn’t have the energy to think about how that wasn’t even the last time that had happened to him. He certainly wasn’t about to catch feelings over thinking about Jack Morrison. So he let himself be pissed off, instead.

Second, he hated being woken up via text message. But that was the kind of thing his current job required, so he sat up and grabbed the burner phone that had gone off. He blinked once, twice, yawning as he acclimated to the 3am darkness that surrounded him.

<TMW NITE IS GO.>

Then a second text, from a different phone number, chirped. That one was a little more pleasant.

<CLEANING CREW. TMW NITE.>

He snorted. Both sets of men paying him were idiots. But in about twenty four hours, that wouldn’t be his problem anymore. He deleted both messages and put the burner down. After a moment, he reconsidered- he grabbed the phone and pulled out the sim card, placing it on the phone.

He always made sure that his clients knew that once he was given a command, they could not revise or revoke it. So once those messages were sent, he didn’t need to hear from them, period. Maybe he could get a couple hours of sleep.

But first, water. He turned and put his feet on the floor, slipping into his black slippers. He rolled his shoulders, heard something crack. Maybe he was finally getting old. He could fucking hope.

This was the nicer of his two apartments, a two story set up that gave him room for a pool table and two workstations. The repair/sewing station was on the first floor, and the guns were in his bedroom. He passed his latest dissembled project, touching it for a moment before going downstairs.

The dream must have really fucked up his concentration, because as he got off the steps, a tea kettle whistle went off.

No, that wasn’t right. Gabe grimaced. He’d heard the whistle earlier- but he’d confused it with alarms in his dreams.

The thing was, if someone was going to break into Gabe’s apartment to rob or kill him, they’d be shit out of luck. Gabe didn’t need any of the numerous weapons in the apartment to kill someone, and toying with him by putting  _ tea water _ on would only serve to piss him off. Gabe didn’t have a normal response to threats like this anymore- he just slipped off his slippers so that he’d be better prepared in case of a fight.

And then she spoke. “I thought I would have to break in, Gabriel. I didn’t expect to guess your security password on the first try.”

Gabe didn’t want to smile, but he did anyway. It was the least he could do when he heard the voice of a dead friend. “You’re the only person on the planet that could.”

Ana was in his kitchen, her back turned towards him as she turned off the stove. The whistling subsided. She was dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue sweater, reminiscent of the color of their old uniforms. She’d taken her shoes off, padding around in white socks. Gabe presumed that she’d taken off her shoes at the door. She didn’t even turn her head. “That’s very sloppy of you.”

“What? Picking a password only a dead woman would know?” Gabe shrugged, bending down to put his slippers back on. “I take it my address was easier for you than my phone number?”

He didn’t ask where she’d been. She was alive, and while maybe a few years ago he would have cursed her out for not being dead, he didn’t care about that now. Of all the faces from his past that he could be looking at, hers was certainly the most pleasing, and the least obnoxious.

“I don’t know if soldiers like us ever really die, Gabriel.” But the vaguely philosophical statement was undercut by the sidelong look that she threw him. She was talking about specifics that she hadn’t let him in on yet. That was fine; Ana liked getting to things in her own time. Gabe wasn’t under the delusion that resurrection would fill her with a sense of urgency.

There was a middle island in his kitchen with two stools- the second stool was there because the kitchen came with two stools, not because he ever had guests, but he was grateful for it now. He sat down on his usual stool and watched Ana move around his kitchen as if she’d been there for months. “How long have you been in my house?”

It was Ana’s turn to shrug. “Not very long. I knew you’d wake up by the time the tea was ready..” She placed two mugs on the island. She’d already unearthed Gabe’s tea, and continued to prepare the cups. “It’s good to see you well. I worried that when I found you…”

“What?” Gabe snorted. “That’d I’d be a feral mess somewhere? Completely incorporeal?” He shook his head. “Killing’s my business, Ana-”

“-and I take it business is good?” She may well have been asking about a niece or nephew’s grades.

“Always.” He was lying, but whether or not she realized it, Ana wouldn’t point it out. Sometimes, he went months without a good job. He grew used to the gnawing, followed by a beautiful buffet of gorging that could last for weeks. He was old enough to have a handle on himself now, to know how to keep the hunger at bay in small bits and pieces. To know when he  _ had _ to take a job even though it was absolutely below his pay grade, because one good kill, one soul, would keep him sane.

She wasn’t asking about all that, though. She was investigating if he was taking care of himself. Poking around to see how stable he really was. And Gabriel Reyes was stable at the moment. In less than twenty four hours, he’d be  _ incredibly _ stable.

She passed him his mug. “Too good to have time for old friends?”

Gabe narrowed his eyes as he accepted. The use of the plural was suspicious. “Depends on the old friends, I guess.” Ana was setting up to ask him about a job. He knew this conversation- he’d had it many times during his career. The pre-game dance. He was unaccustomed to having it with Ana.

Suddenly, he knew what this was about. He rolled his eyes. “I’m not fucking joining up with Winston’s Mickey Mouse Club.”

Her eyebrows raised gently. “Well, at least I know you received his message. We were curious.”

Of course Gabe had gotten the transmission. He may have ignored Winston’s pep talk, but he’d had the channel open and ready to receive in the first place. It was a bad, sloppy habit, the last really sloppy one that he hadn’t ever managed to shake. Keeping that channel ready for messages was a fool’s gambit. The message that had finally gone through had been from Winston, pleading with everyone to show up for some damn Heroes’ Reunion, like picking up the old banner would fix anything.

Would repair anything that had been fucked over.

“I’m surprised that got you out of hiding.”

“Fareeha asked me,” Ana stated simply. “Fareeha and Angela.” Gabe nodded in understanding. There was little that Ana would refuse her daughter, and even though Fareeha had seen the fall of Overwatch, Gabe was unsurprised that she still clung to its ideals. “And once I spoke with Winston, he convinced me to stay.”

“Oh word?” Gabe leaned in. “What’s he got that you give a shit about?”

Ana didn’t even blink. “Jack.”

 

**

 

Luckily, Gabe could wash out the taste of the conversation with a bloodbath.

He was crouched on the rooftop of a semi-abandoned warehouse whose lease was ‘nebulous’ and whose owners probably didn’t exist. He was a dark gray gargoyle, his hooded sweatshirt pulled over his face and a black ski mask over his mouth and nose. His shotguns were in hand, one resting on his shoulder, his fingers behind the trigger, 

The wannabe-emerging cartel members were doing their best to hustle beneath him. Gabe was wasted on this part of the job, a look out as they took out the guards. He could have done it in half the time, but his way was a lot messier- and these men had made the mistake of hiring him when they were too scared to  _ use _ him.

He should have been far out of their budget, but they were so  _ sure _ that this would work that they’d forked over Reyes Cash, and it had been awhile since Gabe had decent work.

The men who had hired Gabe were milling around the two main trucks, loading as much tech and weaponry into them as possible. His lip curled in disgust; it was so  _ sloppy _ , and last night’s conversation had just reminded him that he’d once worked with efficient people. That they could have been in and out of there in a matter of minutes.

_ What’s he got that you give a shit about? _

_ Jack. _

Winston didn’t  _ have _ Jack, technically. What he had, apparently, were rumors, and a sketchy ass surveillance tape they’d scrounged up from a suspicious assault on a gang stronghold. It was a load of bullshit, but Ana presented it with the same sober intensity that she presented everything that she believed to be true.

And for some reason, some how, Winston had convinced a dead woman that the rumors of her death weren’t the only ones that had been highly exaggerated. But Ana hadn’t been there, when Gibraltar blew up, and Winston hadn’t seen everything that Gabe did. There was no resurrection from false death for the remains of Jack Morrison.

And in order to function, Gabe really needed them to get away from him with that hopeful bullshit.

_ A one man army, Gabriel. Hitting sites with access to old Overwatch tech. _

_ Sounds like an idiot. OW is in the past for a reason. _

_ The tactics, the skill. The footage- it sounds like Jack. _

_ Jack and I trained a lot of soldiers. Finding footage of a white man that knows a trick or two isn’t hard. _

Gabe shook his head, trying to rid himself of the echoes of the previous night. It was unfortunate that seeing Ana alive again came with the baggage of Jack’s name, but he could move past that. It would just take a little time, and a little violence- both of which he was about to have in spades.

Below, one of the men closed the back of one of the trucks, and gestured broadly for the rest of them to group up. He glanced up at Gabe, squinting in the darkness, and nodded- he was guessing at where Gabe might be, he was off by a foot or so, but Gabe understood. He understood the signal better than the man giving it did, honestly.

His second employer of the night offered more money to make sure that these men never finished their mission.

He stood up, rolling his neck, giving his arms a good solid shake. He narrowed his eyes, aiming all his focus at the roof of the truck they were congregating around. Gabe felt his body grow lighter, less corporeal, saw the wisps of smoke that normally made a solid body. This wasn’t painful; this was freeing. This dissolving, unfurling, was like releasing a breath held involuntarily.

Half-way through the teleportation, there was the crack of a gunshot, and Gabe pulled himself back into solidity. The crack was repeated, became crackling. Morbid popcorn popping, Gabe thought, because his humor had always been shit and ill-timed.

Pulse rifle. A pulse rifle that was doing half of Gabe’s work for him, as the wannabe gangsters below smacked against the truck’s door with heavy splats.

Gabriel Reyes didn’t need the money, but fuck if he wasn’t hungry. The blood smelled almost as strongly as their souls did, clinging to space as if they might find purchase again. Gabe couldn’t afford to let them have the opportunity. 

He refocused his attention and energy to directly  _ in front _ of the truck, the opposite direction of the pulse fire. Gabe expanded and teleported, reassembling in cover. As he poked his head out from his new position, one of the men who’d hired him was running in his direction, fleeing.

One quick shot and the man’s head stopped, seconds before the rest of his body collapsed to the ground. He was close enough that Gabe could feed without having to move much further out, pulling the man’s soul in, filling the spaces that threatened to unravel into aether.

But the intruder with the heavy pulse rifle was still firing. There were two beats of silence, and then a sound that Gabe knew even better than the rifle.

“ _ The fuck _ ?”

What else could he say when he had to slip back into cover to protect himself from  _ helix rockets _ ?

With an aggravated groan, he allowed himself to unravel again, to become smoke. He came around one side of the truck, feeding as he traced the path of the rockets to their origin. What he saw didn’t make sense.

_ A one man army, Gabriel. Hitting sites with access to old Overwatch tech. _

[Gabe’s hand was around his throat, but Jack didn’t claw at his fingers. Gabe spoke, but Jack saw smoke more than he heard words, because Gabe’s words didn’t make sense. He saw smoke curl around Gabe, come from Gabe’s skin, peel off of him and from his tongue. Jack watched curlicues of purple-black smoke lift from Gabe’s hand and his mouth and move towards Jack’s face. It caressed at first, teasing a cold sense of a void. Then it entered, and suddenly Jack’s mouth was filling with that coldness, and it pushed its way down Jack’s throat. It was there, and something was being pulled out, and Gabe-]

Gabe’s whole existence shuddered, and he knelt as his body reformed. He tried to breathe, but his throat was raw and he could feel the ghost of something that couldn’t happen filling it.

The shooting had also stopped, but Gabe could see the silhouette, yards away. The shape of a body that Gabe knew well, although he couldn’t make out the face. A body that had shuddered just now in time with his, Something had stopped them both.

From behind Gabe, one of the runners attempted to grow a spine. Gabe could hear him picking up one of his fallen comrade’s weapons. Gabe didn’t bother to turn fully, just aiming backwards. He was fixated on the silhouette, who moved his rifle in time with Gabe’s shotgun. Who fired with the same rhythm, as if they moved as one.

The runner might as well have died twice.

The silhouette pulled out of their trance before Gabe did, and it was as if the world shook out of sync. The silhouette reaimed their rifle and took a shot at Gabe.

Gabe was well fed, and let his head go incorporeal for the length of time it took the shot to go through his head. It hit the truck behind him, blowing the lock on it open.  “The fuck you think you’re doing, soldier!?” He didn’t mean to shout it, but he did, his voice less human than he’d heard it in a long time. “You’re not going to kill  _ me _ \- doesn’t matter how good your aim is! “

He wanted to hear a response. To hear the voice that a part of him was already trying to deny. The silhouette didn’t give him the satisfaction, though, choosing to retreat.

Gabe didn’t want to chase, and since he didn’t have to admit it outloud, he could say that it was because of fear. Fear of who he’d catch up with. He turned his head over his shoulder, looking at the blasted open truck doors and the contents within.   
One large case- for a sniper rifle, from the looks of it- was still emblazoned with the OW logo.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabe is reunited with the old crew. He's still skeptical

“ _ This _ is your new Overwatch?”

The warehouse..was a work in progress. Computer consoles and data pads on top of crates. Crates on top of crates on top of more crates. The only finished set up was a back corner, with its large wrap desk, terminals, and a holographic briefing table. 

Winston was finishing up the rig for his secondary suit when Gabe spoke. He turned towards the sound, adjusting his glasses as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing. “Gabriel!” His voice boomed with excitement before realizing that he had to reign it in. He cleared his throat. “Uh, Ana said you, uh, weren’t interested.”

Ana walked past Gabe, her side brushing against him as he stood, arms crossed, evaluating the mistake he’d made by showing up. “The situation has changed. Gabriel has decided to work alongside us.”

“Well, um, welcome to Overwatch!” Winston declared, gesturing broadly with the wrench in his hand. It clanged against the rig, and he winced, embarrassed.

“I’m not a feature on your Overwatch reunion track,” Gabe declared. “So get that idea out of your head.”

“Don’t be cruel,” Ana scolded. She was making her way towards the holo table. “We have too much work to do.

Gabe didn’t know what she was talking about until he saw the way that Winston had pulled back as soon as Gabe spoke.He cursed under his breath; he might not have been in the mood for a Winston-hug (he’d never once, in his entire life, been in the mood for a Winston-hug), but he didn’t mean to squash the poor gorilla. He was practically a kid, as far as Gabe was concerned, and so Gabe sighed. “It’s been awhile, Winston.”

What Gabe didn’t say was that he was half a step away from turning back around and saying to forget this stupid little idea. He looked at the patchwork set up that Winston was trying to put together and wondered what the hell they all thought they were doing. This wasn’t Overwatch. This wasn’t even the Watchpoint- and the Watchpoint, with all its perks and budget and support? It fell.

This was so much worse than he assumed it would be. Gabe changed the subject. “Where’s everyone else? I thought you put together a crack team of agents.” He couldn’t tell if he sounded sarcastic or not, and so he hoped it came off like his normal pessimism. That Winston remembered what his normal pessimism actually sounded like.

“Oh, you know,” Winston was saying, “Here and there. Dr. Ziegler is dealing with a shipment for the medical bay.” He gestured towards the other side of the warehouse, to a pile of untouched crates. Turning away from Gabe and back to his work, Winston was regaining his confidence. “Lena is-”

“-who?” Gabe interrupted. The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Tracer,” Ana offered. Gabe nodded; he remembered her code name, although the two of them hadn’t worked much together. “She’s doing recon at the moment, on a few places that we suspect Soldier 76 may hit.”

“Alone?” Tracer has a special relationship with space and time, but that didn’t mean that she could keep out running Jack’s helix rockets. Soldier 76’s, Gabe corrected himself. He didn’t want to start sounding like Ana, so sure of something that could be so very wrong. “That sounds like a bad idea.”

“Purely zero-engagement,” Ana assured him. “If anyone can swiftly exit a location, regardless of the firing situation, it is Tracer. Even if she doesn’t do it like you would.” Gabe rolled his eyes. If that was the way they were going about things, it wasn’t his problem. This wasn’t his team- they had information he needed to see.

“So you two, Tracer, Angela...that’s what we’re working with? What about Reinhardt? Mcree? Zarya?” There were so many bases not covered, and Gabe couldn’t help but run through them in his mind.

Ana shrugged. “Zarya is unavailable- she is government employed, and we do not have the power to request a loan of one of Russia’s top soldiers. Mcree has gone dark. Reinhardt...he is game, but it will be awhile before he is available. It’s unclear whether or not we can wait.”

She smiled tightly as she turned on the holo table. It flickered before a matrix of blue loaded. It reshaped itself- security footage, Gabe realized. The soldier from the night before was fuzzily visible in the distance, his face obscured by the very same hi-tech mask that Gabe had seen before.

His target was a highly guarded...fortress? Gabe couldn’t quite tell the details from this angle, but it resembled an abandoned OW headquarters. The soldier was outside of the facility, mowing down the mercs and muscle that had taken the place of the experienced guards that once kept watch. He was efficient, triggering charges at one end of the video and taking out the remaining guards with a combination of headshots and rifle butts to the cranium. He looked around quickly, to make sure that no one else was there.

The strange moment, however, was when he looked up at the camera. He gestured upwards, a universally understood motion:  _ I see you _ . He entered the facility.

“Soldier 76, as he’s been called,” Winston interjected as the recording flickered to a freeze frame, “Stole three crates of explosives and ammunition. He left heavy artillary- but destroyed it in an explosion on his way out.”

“It was all Overwatch weaponry, right?” Gabe said, staring down at the recording. “OW facility, OW weapons…”

“It could be because that’s the equipment he’s familiar with,” Ana offered as an option. “He builds an arsenal with weapons he knows he can operate solo.”

“It could be that he’s, uh, destroying caches to thwart gangs,” Winston added. “Nearly all the facilities were specifically in gang-controlled territory-” Ana gently held up a hand to stop Winston. “I, uh...what?”

She was staring at Gabe. “What do you think it is?”

“A message,” Gabe said after a moment. “He wants someone in particular to know he’s hitting them. Someone he knows is looking at the footage. That’s not gangs. They don’t share information like that, they wouldn’t make the connection. And it’s not us- no offense, Winston, there’s no way he knows about you.”

Winston’s head bobbed as he accepted Gabe’s point. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if the word was out there already.” Gabe allowed him the point. Winston put his hands down on the side of the table. “If this is Jack, uh- Commander Morrison,” he glanced at Gabe as if he had to apologize to the mercenary, “Who does he need to send a message to?”

“Overwatch,” Gabe answered, holding Winston’s gaze. “The real one.”

“It’s hard to send a message to the dead,” Ana said, although she was smirking.

“Winston managed it just fine,” Gabe gestured between himself and Ana. Winston squared his shoulders a bit, proud of his work. “He wants to spook and mobilize someone. Go to war.” Gabe grimaced, turning away from the table.

A one man war? It sounded exactly like the kind of stupidity that Jack Morrison excelled at. Gabe clenched his fists in order to feel himself  _ be _ solid- he was more emotional than he wanted to admit, and it threatened to show itself in his corporeal body unraveling. Small wisps of shadows licking at his fingertips. It was ridiculous- the job should have sated enough of his hunger that keeping  _ this _ kind of thing under control wasn’t a problem. Trying to step into Jack’s head, apparently, expended more energy than Gabe had thought.

Maybe he was out of practice.

“Gabriel?”

It wasn’t Ana or Winston’s voice. Gabe’s head shot up. “Hey doc.”

Angela Ziegler was coming up from the basement, dressed in a pair of jeans and a button up pink oxford shirt. She smiled warmly, and it was the third person to smile at him like that in as many days. It felt wrong. She came over, and Gabe feared she might want to hug- if she had, she caught Gabe’s reluctance and held out her hand instead. They shook hands in greeting instead. “It  _ is _ good to see you are doing well.” She paused, noticing his hands for the first time. “You are…?”

Gabe pulled his hand back faster than he intended. “Yeah, I’m great, doc. Just peckish.” It was the same dry, creepy joke that would get him in trouble back in his blackwatch days. Dr. Ziegler was one of the only people in medical that wouldn’t recoil when he said it, waiting anxiously for him to lose control- that was true even when they first met, when she was only a teenager. He respected that. “You?”

“Glad to be of service,” she replied.

“What, running hospitals not enough for you?”

“I’m technically a board member at the moment,” she quipped, “Removed from the day to day. I do some lab research but when Winston sent out the call...this is where I belong. I’m sure you understand.”

Did he? Gabe didn’t respond, shoving his hands back into the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “Why Los Angeles, Winston?”

“Um, that’s where the commander was heading.” As Gabe turned back, Winston was loading up a map, with blinking red dots throughout the city. It expanded slightly past the city limits, and there were red dots at a few highway points. “He’s been circling into the city for several weeks now.”

“I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed,” Angela said.

Gabe scowled. “I keep to myself.” Angela and Ana shared a look, the same sort of look that had always made Gabe want to snap at them. “If they’re not paying, I don’t give a fuck what they’re doing.”

“Do watch your language, Gabe,” Ana teased.

“Go fuck yourself, Amari.” He turned back to Winston. “I was talking about Ja- Soldier 76. Why is  _ he _ in LA?” Gabe sucked his teeth. “We figure that out, we figure out who the message is for.” He crossed his arms over his chest. Something was nagging at him. Something that he’d heard recently, or knew- he shook his head. If it was important, it would come back to him.

Winston nodded in understanding. “I can do that.”

Ana sat down on the side of Winston’s large desk. “Meanwhile...we might be able to track him. There are a limited number of facilities left for him to hit, after all.”

Gabe was already thinking about it. “That’s what you’ve got Tracer working on, right? Think it’s time to give her some back up.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabe and Tracer infiltrate an old Overwatch facility. Gabe gets a closer- much closer- look at the Soldier.

“Cheers, Reaper. Glad to hav-”

Before Gabe left, Winston outfitted him with a communicator, keeping him tied to both HQ and Tracer. He’d almost rejected it; he was not rejoining their failure parade. Still, he was a professional; if he was going to be on the ground with Tracer, than he had to be able to communicate with her. Keep them from screwing each other over- and shooting at one another.

“Let’s skip the reunion,” he said shortly. “What’s the situation?”

From Gabe’s perspective, it looked like either moving in or moving out day at the ‘abandoned’ facility. From the ground, where Gabe was entering, it was a single story doughnut of a building. Old facility blueprints- acquired by Winston while digging through the damaged Overwatch archives- showed that there were at least four levels underground, spiraling downward. Formerly research & development, which was likely why none of it rang as familiar for Gabe- in his career, it was possible he’d never been inside of it.

It wasn’t Overwatch’s anymore. Gabe wasn’t sure whose it was, exactly. Most of the movement was by men dressed in black and white fatigues- not military issued BDUs, but clothing made to make them look like a militarized force. Not to say there wasn’t actual muscle on site, but most of it was dressed in crisp black suits, sunglasses either atop their head or hung on the pocket of their jacket. Those men held themselves like trained soldiers. The fatigue-wearers were workers, carting crates of all shapes and sizes in and out of the facility.

If he hadn’t been able to turn into smoke and slip in through cracked doorways, he might have had a hard time sneaking in. There was a lot of eyes on the place. High alert- was this standard practice with this operation, or had word of Soldier 76 put them on edge? There was only one way for Gabe to find out, and he made his way through a sealed emergency exit, re-materializing in a dark, clearly unused hallway.

“Our boys are high-tailing it outta here it seems,” Tracer whispered on the comms.

“You sure its an exit?”

“You betcha.” Gabe made it to the end of the hall; there was a locked door and a security vent. He grimaced; he really hated using vents. “You see those boxes they’re bringing in? Took a peek in one; filled with junk. Bricks mostly, with some packaging around ‘em. Decoys.”

Gabe cursed to himself; were they really so far behind in the race that they’d snuck in on the enemy laying a trap? “Going ghost; you’ll be audible.” He let himself unravel and float upwards with the draft. Once in the vents, he wouldn’t be able to reform until he made his way back out, which was inconvenient for a number of reasons. Still, it afforded him more than the typical pathways in a building like this.

It was easier to snoop in this form, anyway. Maybe he’d be able to figure out who the trap was for- him and Tracer, or him.

As if answering his question, voices came up from below, tinny against the vents. He followed the sound of them, only semi-following Tracer’s overview of some of her recon. He had the experience to hone in on the important words in either conversation. For Tracer, it was the all about the items being taken out of the facility. Guns, of course, lots of them, but she’d seen some strange armor as well. Lots of armor, actually. Some pieces of art even- large, expensive pieces, most of them Japanese. That narrowed things down before she even finished rattling off her conclusions.

Non-military operation, but the money and force to claim an Overwatch facility. The suits and muscle. Weapons and art. The art especially cut out a few of the more obvious options as to who they were dealing with at this facility. And who they were dealing with were going to be a lot better trained than those jokers from Gabe’s last job.

The conversation that he was following got clearer. “…perimeter is clear. For now.” The conversation was in Japanese. Gabe’s Japanese was rusty, but learning it had been a requirement for higher level infiltration work. And it wasn’t nearly as rusty as his Korean or Russian. “I don’t believe he’ll show up tonight, but Mr. Shimada-”

“Mr. Shimada,” the other voice interjected. This voice belonged to a low-alto female, and the sharpness of her tone implied she outranked the man she was speaking to. Of course it was the Shimada Clan- they’d ranked high in Gabe’s suspicions. What had Soldier 76 done to piss them off, he wondered. “Is unconcerned about whether the Soldier wants to show up tonight. His focus is making sure that the soldier does. There are other contingencies in place to make sure that happens. Don’t concern yourself with ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’. You make sure that your men are prepared for ‘when’. Is that clear?” There was silence for a moment; possibly a nodding assent, since the woman was unbothered. “Mr. Shimada wants the soldier dealt with before the gala. Your team will do that tonight.”

“Of course.”

There was the sound of foot steps walking away beneath the vents. So they were going after Soldier 76- and they planned to kill him tonight. Or at least incapacitate him. In spite of Gabe’s previous observations in terms of the suits and their training, he couldn’t help but be insulted for Jack. Did they not remember who they were dealing with? Jack trained and out-fought dozens of soldiers on a regular basis, and that was long before these men had probably ever learned to walk. The urge to curl his lips in disgust nearly threatened to make Gabe re-materialize, and he caught himself; this was not the space for that.

And this reconnaissance was not about Jack. It was about Soldier 76 and tracking his targets. Understanding them. He couldn’t turn into Winston and the cheer squad, assuming, deciding it was Jack. No matter how much he felt it in his guts, how much he knew those movements next to the armored truck only nights before, no matter how much the familiar fshoosh of helix rockets soaring past him was…

His thoughts- and Tracer’s constant reporting of her observations- were cut short by blaring alarms and red lights. The alarms made the vents shudder around Gabe’s vaporous form. The breach made a pleased shiver of adrenaline shoot through him where his spine should be: These Shimada shits were about to remember who they were fucking with.

Not that Gabe knew who they were fucking with, of course.

“We’ve got troops moving towards first level, B-entrance,” Tracer said after a moment. “Bought to get a touch messy up here before I can vanish- fancy giving me a hand?”

If Gabe could have snorted, he would have; she should have been clearing out. So should he- but he needed to see this.

***

The intruder had breached the entrance, and left chaos in his wake.

Gabe re-materialized behind three guards trying to converge on one of the major hallways. Their weapons hit the ground before their bodies did, while their blood sprayed everywhere. Gabe wasn’t concerned about adding to the blood ambiance that the intruder had already created; he was more concerned about making sure that he kept himself from getting shot by…anyone, really.

The only person that Gabe knew for sure wasn’t going to take an intentional shot at him was currently moving so quickly that at times there seemed to be three, four of her, a loud pop as the time stream belched her out and grabbed her back. It was an impressive fighting style, with an almost mocking, playful edge regardless of how deadly serious Tracer really was. In moments of incorporeal invulnerability, Gabe could observe it, absorbing the death that all three of them- Gabe, Tracer, and him- left in their wake.

Tracer wasn’t leaving, though, not yet, and Gabe wasn’t sure if it was due to curiosity, or because she wasn’t going to leave without him. Gabe didn’t need her back up, whether he chose to stay or bounce. Instead of telling her that, though, he decided to use her presence. Blackwatch had always relied on either shadows or distraction, and if she was already being the second, that afforded him the opportunity to follow the trail of about-to-be-dead to the man of the hour.

Gabe let off a few more shotgun blasts, and when his clip was empty, he unraveled and flew between and around the men that remained. They were converging on Tracer (or, rather, they thought they were: as soon as they had her surrounded, she’d be seconds before or behind them, ready with a wave and a bullet), or heading further down the hallway. That was where Gabe needed to be. He could feel where he needed to be, as if that was the most solid thing in the facility.

Before he could even see the Soldier, Gabe knew the scene; he knew he’d find him around a corner, using the wall for cover, taking a few impressive shots (head shots, of course) before ducking back behind it. Reloading. Breathing hard, heart pounding in his ears. Mind racing with a map of the facility, likely exit routes, the number of men still narrowing in on his location, the plan, the fucking plan, thrown off by rumors of tech and Talon and Overwatch and gossip that sounded like-

Gabe solidified against his will, thrown out of his movement by a rage and frustration that wasn’t his, that managed to choke him in a form where he’d had entire bastion units move through him with ease. He dropped to his knees behind four men that turned, startled by the sudden slamming noise he’d made. His knees screamed as they made contact with the ground. It was the same thing that had happened when he’d fought against the soldier before. Except this hadn’t slammed him into a memory almost forgotten, that taunted him in his sleep. This, he knew, was current, the present, less like Tracer’s abilities and more like…

More like what? There was an answer at the tip of his tongue, a muffled scream.

No, the muffled scream was the sound of the last of four men collapsing in front of him. Being dropped, as Soldier 76 stood mere feet away. There was no weapon in his hands. He’d snapped at least two necks.

White hair and a red line of light starred down at Gabe from above a black-and-blue metal mask. Gabe was being scanned, he knew, analyzed. Gabe couldn’t help but do the same in the short seconds they’d been afforded. He cataloged it all; the uniform, the mask, the tightly held fists, the solid stance. The helix rocket attachment, the grenades and other items strapped on arms and thighs. A mini-armory.

An anger lacing the soldier’s posture that Gabe would recognize anywhere.

Gabe allowed himself that lip curl from earlier. “The fuck you think you’re doing soldier?” The soldier didn’t speak, but quickly jerked his chin upward. Gabe felt what he was referring to in more than one way, with both the experience of field combat and the sense that he could see what was behind him, that his eyes were locked in to whatever the soldier was staring at. He reached up behind him sharply; let his fists tighten in a man’s lapels, and threw them over his head. The soldier moved in tandem, smoothly sidestepping but grabbing the man and launching him backwards. The momentum of both tosses caused the enemy to hit the wall so hard as to leave a dent as he slid down, unconscious.

Gabe came apart and reformed at the soldier’s back, fists up and ready. It was like electricity as their shoulder blades barely touched; familiar, aching electricity. He pushed that back to his mind, focusing still on how his eyes were the Soldier’s eyes; it was as if he had access to a full 360 degree view of the space around them. This wasn’t familiar, but it was something that Gabe could use- and use it he did.

Either of them could take a dozen men, if necessary; together, it was a joke. And everything about their movements were together. There was a flow to these moments that Gabe failed to describe: His limbs were an extension of this Soldier, and the Soldier’s enhanced vision seemed to feed information to Gabe’s mind. There were seconds were Gabe was unsure which body was his in the fight, where he was sure that his hands were, for an instant, clad in red gloves, that he felt the weight of a leather jacket that he wasn’t wearing. He didn’t have time to be panicked or worried; they were moving down the hall with a joint purpose.

Infinitely better than rockets swirling towards Gabe’s head like a football.

At some point they both picked up discarded assault rifles, blowing through a seemingly endless collection of bodies. Tracer was in Gabe’s ear; he somehow knew that the Soldier could hear the same concerned questions that he was. “We pulling out, yeah? Like, now?”

“Go,” Gabe grunted. “I’ll follow.” He swore he heard a snort from the Soldier; he would have flipped him off if the moment had allowed for it.

They hit a quiet place, pressed against the walls at the tip of a T-intersection. Soldier gestured both ways; he wanted them to split up.

“You’re out your damn mind if you think I’m letting you go,” Gabe said between heavy breaths. He wasn’t sure how it sounded, or how he intended it. The Soldier was annoyed with that answer, and more annoyed with Gabe’s outstretched arm, pressing him against the wall harder. At least, he was until he realized why Gabe was doing it; Gabe had leaned around the corner to take a couple of unprepared guards out. “What’s the mission?”

The answer hit Gabe without words, in a confusing jumble of images and recollections that nearly weakened his knees again. SEP, a dead curly-haired scientist on the floor, his own men, friendly fire, Jack screaming his name- data files with half-corrupted words, classified information wrapped up in outrage and betrayal, a punched out terminal…

…and the gauntlet. The gauntlet being transported a hundred times over, by different hands and faces. Here- or at least it had been, because as soon as Gabe saw that image, he knew it had been moved, knew that those crates being moved out had most definitely had the gauntlet in them. But how the fuck did the Shimada clan get their hands on something like that-

Gabe wanted to ask the question, but he looked up and…the Soldier was gone, as was the feeling of shared bodies, shared skin. “Fuck!”

He turned to vapor as he punched the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A memory, and a check up

**UNITED STATES MILITARY BASE: LOCATION [REDACTED]/MEDICAL, YEARS AGO**

 

Jack rubbed his neck. He hadn’t allowed them to fix it; it was just bruising now, and there were other soldiers who needed to take priority. If, after everyone else had been treated, they still wanted to make him ‘camera ready,’ then he’ll deal with that. For now, his fingers traced tender skin, where Gabe’s fingers had clenched his throat. No, he wasn’t quite ready for them to make this go away, although he’d be at a loss to explain why.

And if it weren’t for the events of the last forty eight hours, he would be at a loss to explain the black and purple smoke seeping through underneath the door. He tensed, still unaccustomed to watching the vapor rise, reform, create the man that had been his best friend throughout the majority of his military career.

Gabe was solid now, leaning against the back of the door. He locked it before crossing his arms, but Jack didn’t see any particular malice or threat from the man. No more than his usual resting expression, anyway. “These idiots need a refresher course on security protocol.” His voice hadn’t settled back to normal. It was still just this side of inhuman, still not quite the voice that Jack had heard night after night.

“I think we’ll have to start from scratch to deal with,” Jack gestured forward with the hand that wasn’t at his throat. “This.” Gabe nodded, conceding the point. “They’re going to be looking for you.” He pointed up at the camera on the wall. Almost as soon as he did, he saw the red power light turn off. He turned to Gabe again.

“Someone owes me a few favors.” Gabe licked his lips, a rare twitch of discomfort. Jack tilted his head, wincing immediately and righting his head. He wouldn’t be doing that for a few days. “What did they tell you?”

“The doctor is dead,” Jack answered simply. Gabe’s expression didn’t change. “Two of our men, dead. One in a coma. Several injured to varying degrees. We were unprepared for one of our own, and we paid for it.” Jack wasn’t sure yet whether he was scolding Gabe or himself. After all, he’d had a hand in training these men. _His_ job was to prepare them for anything. Everything. He and Gabe had even worked on rogue agent scenarios, drilled his men over and over again…but fear and lack of preparation had both reared their ugly heads.

Gabe dropped down into a crouch, his knees resting on his elbows and his head dropped back on the door. He sighed. “We trained these men for war against ‘bots. Against humans. Not…” He lifted one hand, and purple black smoke took its place, if only for a second. Then it was normal again. Jack swallowed, and that hurt too. “Not the after effects of the Soldier Enhancement Program.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Can’t believe SEP did this to you.” They were soldiers, Jack knew that. They did what they were ordered to do, to the extent that it was the right thing to do. The SEP was supposed to make them better at their jobs, better soldiers, better heroes, to be overdramatic about it. What Jack had seen, experienced, what Gabe had done…Was this why they’d signed up? What they’d fought to become?

“The way those ingrates tell it,” Gabe said, “It was ‘unforeseen’. Every soldier responds to SEP’s experimentation differently. Most die. Some get to be you. Others…” Gabe snorted. “There aren’t others. There’s just me.” Jack moved off the examination table gingerly; he was still banged up in other places on his body. More so from being restrained than from Gabe knocking him around. He crouched down in front of Gabe, his posture a mirror of Gabe’s unintentionally. “It’s nice to know I was always the monster they needed me to be. Just…real deep down.”

Jack frowned. The camera was off, and so he took a risk he normally wouldn’t; he reached his fingers out slowly, intertwined one hand with Gabe’s. “Gabe, don’t-”

“I’m not getting soft on you, Morrison,” Gabe assured him. The dark smile that curled his lips wasn’t amused; it wasn’t even happy. It was the same expression he used to make younger SEP recruits squirm. Shit themselves. It was a shared joke between the two men. Jack knew Gabe wasn’t going to do anything when he looked at Jack like that, and Gabe knew Jack was one of the only people on the earth not scared when he smiled like that. “I’m not hurt, or upset. I feel free as a motherfucker.”

That was hardly comforting, both as a soldier, and Gabe’s partner. Not that Gabe had ever, in the years they’d known each other, been a ‘comfort’ to Jack. “Mind if I ask a question, soldier?”

“You can’t call me soldier and then ask nicely, Morrison. Try again.”

“What’d they say about the hunger?”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “What’s there to say? Described what I saw to the doctors, to the scientists. Reigning theory is I feed off of a man’s life force now. But I can’t do that unless someone’s been…liberated from it.” He laughed, and this one was only slightly more bitter than his norm. “Seems I can go a very long time before it becomes too much to handle.” He bared his teeth in another smile; this one was almost sad, but not quite, and not for the reasons that it ‘should’ have been. “They’re never gonna give me that promotion. Not anymore. They need me, they need this…but I’m still fucked. How’s that for a bad joke?”

Jack didn’t quite ‘get’ the humor. But he understood.

 

**NEW OVERWATCH HQ: OUTSIDE LOS ANGELES. YEARS LATER**

 

“-Gabriel?”

It was Angela’s voice that knocked Gabe back into reality. He’d been in a waking dream, a recollection from the wrong side of the mirror. His fingers curled around the ghost of Jack’s- no, around his own- throat. There was too many moments in his head, far more than the present could account for. He wondered, idly, if this was what Tracer experienced in the field, or if it came more naturally to her. He shook his head and tried to find purchase in the moment in order to center himself.

He was in what qualified as Neo-Overwatch’s (as Winston and Tracer had taken to calling it) medical bay. The basement of their warehouse was smaller than upstairs, and split in two by folding dividers; across the thin ‘walls’ was the armory. On this side, Gabe was seated atop a brand new gurney. Most of the equipment was brand new; some of it was still half-in, or at least placed next to, the boxes it had arrived in.

Angela was wrapping up a full scan. “I was afraid we’d lost you, for a moment.”

“Only to my thoughts,” Gabe grunted. The laughter in response came from a few feet away, where Ana had made herself comfortable against the real, more solid wall. “What?”

“You sound like Jack,” She replied with a shrug.

Gabe didn’t appreciate her humor. But he understood, and scowled. “Last thing I need right now.”

“Perhaps you’re wrong,” Ana suggested. Gabe raised an eyebrow, massaging his shoulder to cover his urge to check his neck for bruises. Why did that damn feeling of choking keep floating back to the surface? “Perhaps we need someone to sound and think like Jack right now. It will help us plan our next step.” She fixed the sleeve of her sweater, and her tone became even more deliberately nonchalant than usual. “Unless you still believe that we aren’t dealing with Jack…”

He was willing to admit that he was closer to Ana than any (living, ‘dues-paying’) member of Neo-Overwatch. They’d worked side by side for decades. They’d done missions where for weeks, they were the only other person that the other would see. That built a different relationship between them than the others. Still, Gabe wasn’t ready to talk to even her about this, let alone the rest of the team. He’d be forced to do it shortly, anyway.

“The soldier can fuck with your head,” he finally admitted. Angela turned back to him sharply, looking up from her data pad. The usual fascination and concern was already starting to battle it out across her face- Gabe was used to seeing it from white coats, especially if they OWs emblazoned on their jackets.

_Inside the cell, a doctor- Dr. Franz, identifiable by the mass of tightly coiled brown curls spread like a pool- was slumped over the examination table, face down._

Gabe shook his head, pushing the image away, and continued to explain. “Kept…seeing things, from his perspective, in the facility. Where other combatants were, where he was going to be.” Gabe gestured fruitlessly with one hand, as if that would show the good doctor and Ana what he meant. “It was more than sight. I knew what he was going to do before he did it.”

“You…saw the future?” Ana queried carefully.

“I knew what he was thinking,” Gabe corrected. It was as if they were thinking it together, Gabe didn’t say. He stretched, rolling his neck and feeling joints pop. “Same as if I was deciding to turn left or right.” Angela and Ana glanced at each other, and Gabe knew them both well enough to understand that look. “You know what this is?”

“It’s not that I know what it is,” Angela said. She spoke as delicately as Ana did, which made Gabe nauseous. “It’s that I surprised you _don_ _’t_.”

“The fuck are you talking about, doc?” She didn’t respond, pressing her lips together in concern. Angela held her datapad close to her chest as Gabe stared at her. As Gabe shifted his focus from Angela to Ana. He stood up, arms crossed. “Mind letting me in on the joke, Amari?”

“What else did you see when he was ‘in’ your head, Gabriel?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re right.”

“So you’re just not gonna tell me? We keeping secrets from each other?”

Ana leaned forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, and her response was dead serious. “That’s our job, Gabriel. Secrets.”

“This shit here? It sure as hell ain’t Blackwatch.”

She sighed. “You’ve described this sensation to me before. It’s why I tracked you down for this hunt. I am as surprised as Dr. Ziegler here that you don’t remember. Perhaps if you tell us everything, we can figure out why.”

Gabe wasn’t concerned with ‘why;’ he wanted to know what they were dancing around. Gabe’s nose flared as he tried to sit on his temper. Losing it with Ana had never gotten him anywhere, not in the forty-some-odd years they’d known one another. It wouldn’t start now. He pretended his finger nails weren’t digging into his biceps. If she thought speaking out loud for a couple of minutes would make everything click with him? Fine. He’d try it- for a couple of minutes. That was as far as his patience went. “I asked him what his mission was. Out loud.” That distinction felt important. “Realized the soldier was pulling this…” he grimaced at the word he’d have to use, “…telepathic trick intentionally when he _flooded_ me with the answer.”

“And the answer was…?”

“Something about SEP, about a hacked terminal and Overwatch,” Gabe felt bile rising in his throat. “About the Watchtower.” An invisible weight descended on the room when he said it, as Angela and Ana flinched at the mention. As he flinched. “There was the Doomfist gauntlet too. Something about it being transported, by Shimada, and Jack thought-”

He stopped himself before continuing.

That was the answer wasn’t it? It was what he knew. It was why he was so willing to trust this presence in his head. The reason why these dreams felt like memories, even if he wasn’t sure he remembered them to begin with. He’d experienced this before- and it was only stubborn denial that was keeping him from speaking the truth out loud.

He only fought like that around Jack, even if they’d never been haunted by actual telepathy before. They fought as a unit, as more than a unit, as if the line between the two of them blurred. Had Jack’s death really fucked Gabe up so much that he’d carved out pieces of his memory? That losing Jack had meant that part of his mind had gone with him?

Gabe felt sick again, and turned from the two women, steadying himself by putting his hands down on the gurney. His throat was raw, and his knees were for shit. Fucking Jack Fucking Morrison.

The inside of Gabe’s head had never been the same after Jack’s death. After his supposed death. Because if he’d really just experienced everything he’d just seen…that little shit stain goody-two-shoes was still alive and kicking, wasn’t he?

Gabe didn’t turn, and his voice was low in his throat. “How?”

“We don’t know,” Angela answered. “What we know is that I tried to find both of you after the explosion. I couldn’t find him. A month later, while cataloging tech for liquidation, pieces were missing that match what we saw on security footage- the mask. I’d built it as an experimental prototype, but…”

“I don’t give a shit about that,” Gabe snapped, but he still didn’t turn. Were his shoulders shaking, or was he coming undone again? He couldn’t tell. “How’s he back in my head? How didn’t I feel him before?”

Ana shrugged. “Distance? Perhaps it was dormant for a time? We don’t know how your connection works. Perhaps Jack _was_ clinically dead for a time, perhaps the trauma of losing him closed you off-”

“I wasn’t fucking _traumatized._ ” The hoarseness of Gabe’s voice belied his statement, but Ana, thankfully, did not argue with him. He watched as dark purple smoke rose from his knuckles and took a deep breath. If there was anything a Blackwatch commander could do, it was compartmentalize until he got to punch Jack in the face for his utterly bullshit resurrection. “All right. So Morrison’s back. And he showed me what he was up to.”

“And it involves going after the Doomfist Gauntlet,” Angela finished.

Gabe shrugged, pulling himself back together in more ways than one before turning to face the two women. “Shimada’s got the gauntlet. Jack wants the gauntlet.”

Ana smiled softly. “Are we taking bets on which side we’d rather be on?”

“Tell Winston it’s time to do his job.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The enemy, and a new player, have an interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took awhile because I was playing with the idea of changing my plan with Doomfist considering current game canon. I've made the decision to keep going the way that I was. Hope you still like it!

**Los Angeles Hotel**

The air conditioning was turned up high, and the only warmth Mccree had was from the bottle of whiskey he was nursing. Or maybe the AC wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was the look that the boss was leveling at the woman kneeling in front of him that was dropping the temperature.

Working for Hanzo Shimada the past couple of years had taught Mccree a few things. How to hide his professional disgust (and worry) behind a couple of drinks, for example. How not to wince because Hanzo’s disapproval often made Blackwatch looked like a petting zoo. How to read all those little ticks and quirks that told Mccree exactly what the boss was about to do.

Now, there wasn’t a soul in the world that could pretend to read the boss’ mind. Only a handful that thought at his speed, and most of them were deader than doornails, just in case. Still, Mccree had figured out some of the…foreshadowing? Was that what it was called, when you watched a man who owned half the cops on this coast- and all of them back in Japan, from the way he told it- listen to a report from his underlings with that look? When the boss did that thing where he grabbed an arrow from his nearby quiver and sat, listening to the clusterfuck while toying with the sharp tip of the arrowhead?

That’s what foreshadowing meant, right? Or was it just…understanding?

Hanzo spoke with a measured, false calm, his voice as tense as the underling in front of him. He didn’t address the underling, but he kept his eyes trained on the woman regardless. “You will not fail me, will you Mccree?”

He wasn’t really wild about the boss addressing him. He wanted to be a dozen cities away from this plan, from this kneeling woman and her repeated apologies. From the other questions that the boss had yet to ask. He’d had that feeling for months now; it was the reason he was lifting a bottle of whiskey to his lips and taking a long, burning gulp from it before answering. “I’m gonna do what you pay me for, boss. Nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”

The curl of Hanzo’s lip was too fast and cruel to be a smile. It was a beast baring his fangs before remembering that humans didn’t do that in polite company. He leaned back in his armchair, thumb flicking at the arrowhead. “What you fail to grasp,” he said, and it was clear that he wasn’t talking to Mccree anymore, “is that without this soldier, acquiring the gauntlet is worthless. All of my work, is worthless. Which makes my time and investment…a waste. My time, and the Shimada name, is not to be wasted.”

Nodding too fast, too apologetically, the woman made her case. “We were prepared for the soldier. We used all the information you presented to us, the profile, the history-”

“And yet still, somehow, that wasn’t enough.”

Mccree snorted into his whiskey. “ ‘Course it wasn’t.” That got the boss’ attention again; Mccree cursed internally. Now, Hanzo was waiting for his elaboration. With a long breath, Mccree put the bottle down beside him, stretching as he stood. A deliberate swagger was another trick he’d learned, to mask if he was three or four sheets to the wind. It was close enough to his strut that most didn’t blink; Hanzo’s gaze quickly passed over the intentional movements of Mccree’s hips, and then the second of fumbling feet as he detached himself from the couch.

He put a hand on the top of his hat; it was already lowered to shade his eyes. “Watched the footage myself. Your people were ready for one soldier. Maybe two.” He held up his fingers to illustrate his point, in case anyone had forgotten how to count.

“Are you suggesting that because there were three…” Hanzo’s tone was tense. Impatient with everyone in front of him.

Mccree shook his head. “Maybe your squad could have taken three separate ex-Overwatch, I dunno,” he said, but he let his slightly lengthened drawl indicate how doubtful he really was. “But the two of them together? Reyes and Morrison don’t fight like separate soldiers. Together, they’ve got a different barrel of tricks. No way they could have been ready without ever seeing it. Now, me…?” Mccree smiled slowly; that too was for show. The brim of his hat hopefully hid the fact it didn’t reach his eyes. “I haven’t just seen it what they become. I was trained by it.”

Hanzo snorted, still flicking the tip of the arrow. After a moment of silence, he spoke. “You will have a team of men during the event. See that things go according to plan. If it’s as you say…I want them both.”

Mccree knew Hanzo was going to say that. Didn’t mean he had to like it. “Mind if I put in a couple requests?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Briefing before going after the gauntlet.

**NEW OVERWATCH HQ: Briefing**

 

“He’s going to put the damn thing on display.”

It was the first time Gabe spoke during the briefing. There was a huff of disbelief at the start of it, and another one while he shook his head, trying to figure out the shape of Hanzo’s chess board. He didn’t realize he’d been sneering at the holographic display until he moved his mouth into a different shape.

Winston nodded. His attention was still on his briefing presentation, as he changed the display from images of Shimada employees unloading crates of art at a hotel to Hanzo checking a crate. The shots were snatched from a satellite view, the location of them clear. “Which makes him the brains behind the Numbani exhibit heist a year ago- or that he bought up the collection.”

“Putting it on display so soon is rather…brazen…” Angela stated, her lips curled in distaste.

“Shimada’s aren’t exactly scared of repercussions,” Tracer answered, shrugged from her place beside Winston. “LA’s practically owned by them nowadays.” She glanced over at Gabe. “Least, that’s what all the intel’s pointing to.”

Gabe shrugged. “They’re…around,” he granted. “Plenty of other groups in play, though. Wouldn’t say ‘own’.”

“They’ve got a controlling share of stock,” Ana offered delicately. “But for our purposes, this means nothing. We weren’t suspecting much local help either way, were we?” She glanced around the table, waiting for anyone to offer up a differing opinion. Gabe rolled his eyes at the thought of local law enforcement- or even federal- stomping around one of their missions. He’d experienced it before, back in the days of Overwatch. Blackwatch having to manuever with and around the- relatively- squeamish, scared SWAT teams, had been hell. And they were scared- but mostly of Gabe and his people. That kind of team up got more people hurt than it helped.

Winston cleared his throat. “We’re running on borrowed time. We know that Soldier 76 is going to go after the gauntlet. We know Shimada will be ready to defend it. If we snatch the gauntlet before this gala, I think-”

“Fuck before,” Gabe said. His vehemence startled Winston, for a brief second making his fur puff in shock. “Post someone watching the location over night, but Jack’s not touching the gauntlet before it goes up.”

“There’s too much potential fall out from a day of attack,” Winston countered. “No way he doesn’t minimize bystanders.”

Ana caught Gabe’s line of thinking immediately. “Unless he doesn’t consider the guests bystanders. If he sees them as complicit…” Gabe nodded. “Winston, do you have any footage or data with the guest list?”

Winston started pressing buttons, making small thoughtful noises to himself as he brought up a collage of zoomed in snapshots. Various angles of a clipboard from several images; the clipboard datapad had a scrolling image of names on it. The information on the datapad was strangely fuzzy; a security measure, marring any images that attempted to record it. On the side of the hologram, the names were being pulled and compiled.

Again, Winston cough gently, this time lifting his fist to his mouth to cover it. “I, uh, came up with the anti-visual decryption programming.” After another beat, he pushed the collage out of existence, and the list of names filled the space. Quick flicks and contact highlighted names and brought up a scanning search. Names and government intel files formed a fresh collage.

“Arms dealer,” Gabe listed. “Militant anarchist leader. Expensive arsonist. Mafia. Forger. Owner of the largest private collection of stolen Indian artifacts on the planet.” He shrugged, palms still up and gesturing at the images. “Anyone with a ticket to this thing has enough blood on their hands that even golden boy wouldn’t hesitate here.” There was a silence that raised the hair on Gabe’s forearms. “What?”

Angela’s look could be confused for pity. “You still consider him a ‘golden’ boy, after his recent…” But she couldn’t have pitied Gabe, because that was too stupid to be believed. It would have made Gabe feel nauseous, and Gabe’s stomach didn’t twist like that. Ever. Angela shook her head and moved on. “Hanzo Shimada is showing the most dangerous object on the planet to some of the deadliest men and women on the planet. Why should we not go after the gauntlet early? Just because we want to cross paths with Soldier 76 again?”

“No, we go in during the event because security will be juggling more that night than they will be beforehand.” Gabe said. “We go in vicious, we fuck up multiple enterprises at once.” There was a tug at the back of his mind, a surety that Jack wanted them to take this route. Wanted Gabe to be there at the same time. He didn’t feel the need to address that; if Angela and Ana was expecting him to use this telepathic link, he shouldn’t need to.

Everyone in the room looked at each other in intervals. This infant Overwatch wasn’t Gabe’s child or responsibility, but he was automatically creating a plan. He wasn’t going to feel awkward or apologize about it- if someone had a better idea, an idea that got them both of their targets, now was the time to speak up.

“I’ll take overnight,” Tracer offered.

Gabe nodded. “Winston, you here or with her?”

“I’ll, uh, run things from here,” he answered. “I’ll keep my backdoor open to the cameras in and around the building. The roof’s a tricky spot-” Winston scratched his chin. “I’ll figure it out.”  
Gabe expected nothing less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have posted these two parts as one, but I didn't so here you go :D


End file.
